Amazon Ring plans to use facial recognition scans

Amazon is adding facial recognition capabilities to its Ring devices — but not everyone’s smiling about its new “familiar faces” feature.

According to an Oct. 3 report from The Washington Post, Amazon Ring is using facial recognition in its home security doorbells and video cameras so your door can recognize and identify people you might know — like a family member or neighbor — and privacy experts have some concerns.

Amazon isn't explicitly calling this tech facial recognition and is, instead, opting for "familiar faces." In a Sept. 30 news post about the update, Amazon said the tool "intelligently recognizes familiar people and empowers customers to reduce notifications triggered by familiar people's routine activities."

"The feature enriches Ring notifications, video events, and timeline with personalized context of who is detected, eliminating guesswork and making it effortless to find and review important moments involving specific familiar people across the Ring App experience," Amazon wrote.

The Post reported that the feature is optional for Ring device owners, but privacy advocates still aren't thrilled, since the people being recorded aren't able to consent to it. While you might already use facial recognition in some of your tech — like unlocking your phone — the Ring poses additional risks because of its history of social, privacy, and legal questions, the Post wrote. That's because the difference here is that you're choosing to use facial recognition to unlock your phone — the food delivery workers and kids playing on the street aren't making that choice with your doorbell camera.

"It’s troubling that companies are making a product that by design is taking biometric information from people who are doing the innocent act of walking onto a porch," Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the consumer advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Post.

As the New York Times' Wirecutter pointed out, Ring also has a new feature that allows users to instruct their cameras to automatically respond to specific visitors in specific ways via the Alexa+ Greetings, like calling your brother by name or telling your partner you love them or your neighbor to please leave you alone. Amazon also announced its AI-powered Search Party feature, which is intended to help find lost dogs. It's left on by default, according to The Verge.